Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

TWC told the FCC that it had withheld the documents on an incorrect claim of attorney-client privilege, according to the agency. TWC should have turned over those documents in September, but did not until earlier this month (December). Furthermore, there are another 30,000 documents that were misplaced due to some unspecified vendor error.

The state is getting most of the money from Macquarie Capital. Macquarie has assemble a team including First Solutions, Fujitsu Network Communications, Black & Veatch, and Bowlin Group, to design, develop and operate the private/public network over the next 30 years.

Timeline Labs has built a content management platform that enables its customers to discover, curate and display geographically targeted news stories that are trending across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. SeaChange said it intends to expand the target audience to include multiscreen television service providers.

Now that the NPRM has been published, we can see the legal and policy problems that it will face. There are many. If OVDs are determined by the FCC to qualify as MVPDs, then it might give them certain program access rights. But MVPDs also face certain obligations. Will these same obligations apply to OVDs?

The question is coming up with increasing frequency, and cannot be ignored. Sky Angel continues to press its case. More recently, the Supreme Court confused the issue immensely by likening Aereo to an MVPD, even though absolutely nobody else agrees, a conundrum that helped drive Aereo into bankruptcy.

Telstra has invested directly in Elemental Technologies, leading a $14.5 million Series D round of funding joined by Sky, another Elemental customer that had previously invested in the vendor. Elemental said it will use the funds to accelerate worldwide growth and expand its suite of SDV solutions to support the whole of the IP video delivery chain.

On this day in history 1972, the final three astronauts to travel to the moon arrived back to Earth, successfully completing the Apollo 17 mission. Astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt stayed on the surface of the moon for a record 75 hours.

Communications companies claim that applying Title II regulation to broadband would inevitably lead to up to $15 billion in regulatory fees being passed on to consumers. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, who wrote the Internet Tax Freedom Act, says the claim is "baloney."

This month Cox Communications has added 1,700 Wi-Fi hotspots for its subscribers to log into in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Cox has launched its Wi-Fi service, CoxWiFi, in six markets to date with more planned for next year, including hundreds of new access points in San Diego after the first of the year.

AT&T is now offering Atlanta area businesses a symmetrical 300 Mbps tier ahead of future plans to ramp the speeds up to 1 gigabit. The AT&T Business Fiber deployment followed on the heels of AT&T’s October announcement that it would launch its residential GigaPower service to the Atlanta area it serves.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) is actively recruiting abstracts for next year’s Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans. The deadline for abstract submissions, which will be reviewed by the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo2015 Program Committee that’s chaired by Liberty Global CTO and EVP Balan Nair, is Feb. 17.

Faced with rising cybercrime like the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, companies worldwide are under pressure to tighten security but are hampered by cost and, for some, reluctance to believe they are in danger. The Sony attack was unusual because it included threats of violence if the Hollywood studio released its movie "The Interview," a comedy that depicts the assassination of the North's leader.

To give you a feel for what that connectivity brings, here's a closer look at a few "smart" products for the home. There are plenty more if you look around. As I tried these out, I kept thinking to myself whether these products really needed that connectivity. You'll need to decide whether the benefits are worth the higher prices.

On this day in history, 1958, the world’s first communications satellite, SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was launched into space. Dubbed “Chatterbox,” the satellite was also part of another first, as its launch marked the first successful use of an Atlas rocket as a launch vehicle.

Comcast is attempting a few new twists on customer service, including giving customers several options for not just requesting but actually scheduling a call back, rather than hanging on the line waiting for a service rep to pick up the phone.